Thread by @RadioFreeTom

You need to read this great piece by @RuleandRuin about how the GOP got where it is.
You should read it because it answers the important questions.
1. What happened?
2. How could you have been in the GOP?
3. Does the left have this problem?

/1

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/1…

@RuleandRuin First, Kabaservice explains how the Tea Party was really a movement of people who hated everything about government (except for stuff they wanted), and how badly they sucked at the job of governing. The Tea Party died because "I hate this job" is not how you build a party. /2

@RuleandRuin Second, Geoff notes that every cycle of GOP populism was subsumed by people who knew they had to actually govern, which is how Goldwater, Reagan, and even Boehner became more moderate over time. That's how parties work. /3

And everything Geoff writes about the Right could be said, in terms of dynamics, about the Left, which tamed its hard-edge elements in 1968, 1974, 1992. As it should. The Dems have not had a tea party; maybe that's structurally not possible now, I don't know. (But whew, glad.) /4

Short version: Parties are good and they moderate the excesses of brainless populism and extremism because governing is hard and a job for grownups. The problem is a group of people who wanted to win by mobilizing the worst populist elements, and didn't care about governing. /5

The natural endpoint for this was a cult of personality that didn't even bother working up a platform in 2020. That's how parties die, and why the GOP is just an empty shell of what it once was.

Anyway, read the piece.

/6x